Money Matter (part 1)

Father in Heaven, we come before you this morning just mindful of your graciousness, your kindness, your love toward us.

Father, I pray that you would bless our time here this morning as we look to your word, what you've said about money, about finances, about our need to rely on you.

Lord, I would pray for each and every family that is here, each and every family that attends

Bethlehem Bible Church, that you would make us better stewards of what you've given us, that we might consider everything for what it is, a gift from your hand, one to be properly guarded and to be properly used.

Father, just bless us again in Christ's name, amen. Well, good morning.

This is a topic that is near and dear to my wallet. Okay. A few statistics here.

I just want everybody to kind of grasp, I think most of you do, the issues that we're dealing with here.

This is as of 2009 and I think things are probably getting worse. The average credit card debt per household with a credit card is $15 ,799.

And if you're paying, you know, 20 -25 % interest, I didn't do the calculations to figure out how long that would take to pay back, but it's quite a while.

Especially if you're sending $40 a month. Yeah, I mean, it's like a mortgage without any of the tax write -offs.

I once, well, I won't go there because it wasn't me, but the average total debt in 2009, this is for American households, was $54 ,000.

Of course, that included mortgage. I don't know where those people live. Of course, a lot of people don't have homes, but that included everything.

Young Americans, specifically between the ages of 25 -34, have the second highest rate of bankruptcy.

You get out of school and you go bankrupt. Let's see, financial issues.

How important are financial matters within a family? What kind of pressure does that put on a marriage?

According to experts, it is, you know, I always thought it was maybe higher than this. One person says it's the second highest reason that people get divorced.

Another says it's the fourth highest reason that people get divorced. It's pretty significant.

According to some experts, finances are the number one source of stress. Listen to what this guy says.

He says, you and your family, because of financial problems, you and your family are not able to do what you want to do because of a lack of money.

Debts are piling up, credit card payments, pending mortgage installments, rising costs of education, mounting expenditure on health concerns.

Financial matters top the list of stressors. Now, why are all those things occurring?

I don't know about you, but something changed in my life as I was growing up.

Because I can remember my parents, it seemed to me like somewhere between the ages of maybe 8 and 12, so somewhere in the early 80s, somewhere around 1970, it's almost like a light switch just went on.

And all of a sudden, what happened? People started buying everything on credit, and it's normal to have car payments.

My folks bought a brand new car, I think I can remember that happening once, and it was a

Volkswagen. I think it was like $1 ,800, $1 ,900. Those were the days.

But things just happen. I bet in the 1950s, I bet you probably couldn't even go and get a credit line on your house.

They would look at you like you're crazy or something. But now it's just become commonplace to just go swimming in debt.

Why is that? Forget setting goals, forget saving your money, let's just go get it.

One of the things that's just been driving me nuts over the last probably year or so are these commercials for, with all due apologies to Fred Thompson and It Takes a

Thief, whatever his name is, Robert Wagner. Reverse mortgages. When you get into your advanced ages, as Janet and I are getting to now, the idea that you should see your house as kind of a bank teller, that you could just take money out, hey, forget about it.

You should live the way that you deserve to live. Now besides all these obvious things, what sort of impact does this have on the home?

We talked about stress, we talked about possible divorce, other things like that. When you are robbing both

Peter and Paul to pay the other apostles, then what?

What kind of pressure does that put on you? And then what winds up happening is you look at your budget. What's that?

Your budget is kind of like, I've had people say this to me, this sort of thing. Well, yeah, we have a budget.

The problem is that we don't make as much money as we spend. I mean, in summary. Is that a problem?

Apparently, it's not a problem in our country, sorry. But yeah, it's a problem.

You can't do that. You know, you can only do it for so long and then what happens? The rope runs out, man.

You know, you get to, you're down to the bottom of the rope and you still got a couple hundred feet to go. What happens?

You're in big trouble. You go bankrupt. Now, here's a question for you.

What do you think the average Christian, what percentage of their income do you think that they give to the church?

I have two percent. Any other? You say half? Half a percent?

Okay. I thought you were going to say half their income. I was going to say, that's pretty awesome. You see where Charlie's heart is.

Half his income. I just give it away.

Well, the correct answer is two percent. And we'll talk about that weeks from now,

I think. But I think it all gets back to this issue of debt, budgeting, all these kind of things.

How do people view it? And you know, typically, here's what happens, right? And I'm not going to ask anybody how they do this, but when you sit down and do your budget, what are the first things that you list?

House, or apartment, car, credit cards, utilities, food, insurance.

You know, then there's the sketchy things like car insurance, gasoline, you know, the crazy stuff, tolls, which we're going to be slashed, but that's another story.

All those things, and then, you know, you get down to the bottom line and you've got what? You know, if you started out with X and now you're down to,

I don't know, X minus 2 ,500 or whatever, you know, now you get to where you think, okay, now what we have left over we can give.

The Bible talks about first fruits, you know, but we give what?

Last fruits. We give the dregs. We give, you know, all these things left.

Listen what, now, we'll talk about tithing later. Tithing is not something I believe is a

New Testament principle. We'll talk about why. But I do think that 10 % is a decent guideline.

And I think it's a decent place to be, you know, more or less.

For some people, I think maybe 10 % of their gross is too much. For 10%, because of how little they make.

For some people, 10 % is really not even close to what they ought to be given. Now, listen to what

Randy Alcorn says. He says, I view the tithe of 10 % as a child's first steps. His first steps are not his last, neither are they his best, but they are a fine beginning.

Tithing is, for many, the toddlers or the first toddler step of stewardship. It is the training wheels on the bicycle of true giving.

It may not be a home run, but it gets you on base, which is a lot further than the majority of church members ever get.

Now, he says, two reasons commonly given for not tithing are, I can't see it's right to tithe, or I can see it's right to tithe, but I must pay off my debts first.

And so he asks, why am I in debt in the first place? Is God responsible for my unwise or self -serving decisions that may have put me there?

And even if I have come into debt legitimately, isn't my first debt to God? If we obey

God and make good our obligations to him, then what?

I mean, I think he blesses us all the more. But he says, I can't afford to tithe, of course

I can't. And here's the killer question. He says, what if my salary was reduced by 10 %?

Would I die? I think that's a thought -provoking question.

I can't afford to give, but if that same amount was taken from my salary, would

I just croak? And the answer is probably not. No.

Pam knows somebody that isn't wealthy, and he says he can't, you know, people say that they can't afford to pay 10%.

And he goes, you know, I can't afford to pay that little. You know, I can't live without paying, without giving.

My goal, by the way, in this class over the next several weeks is not to increase giving.

I think that'll be kind of a down -the -road fruit as we think rightly about money.

But my goal is to get us all thinking rightly about money and to take control of what the

Lord has given us, to be good stewards of what he's given us. Whether we have much or whether we have little, we have something.

Whether we're, you know, whether we have the proverbial 10 talents, 5 talents, or 1 talent, we have something, and we will be held accountable for how we use it.

Many say, I have a budget, but few can tell us where the money goes and why they can't afford this or that.

In other words, if you say, well, I can't afford this, I can't afford that, you know,

I can't afford some necessary component of life, well, then I would submit that in many cases, either something untoward has happened, unfortunate, unplanned,

I guess is better. You know, like you lost your job, in which case, well, a budget sort of has to be revamped after something like that.

But for most of us, we don't really have a plan.

We haven't, as one man says, given a name to every dollar that we have. And I would submit to you that money that is not shepherded, you know, if you picture yourself as a shepherd of your money and all your money are just little sheep running around, if you don't shepherd it, then what happens to sheep if they're not shepherded?

They wander away, and that's exactly what happens to people who just go, okay, this is the money I get every week.

I mean, I remember when I first started working, I took home $105 a week. Pretty big time.

What was that? You live in the dream. I live in the dream. I was living large. $105 a week.

I remember when I started out of the sheriff's department, $1 ,900 seemed amazing to me. I mean, when

I started in the army, it was like $400 a month, and they paid for all my food and everything.

I thought I was, you know, that was almost heaven. But money that is not shepherded wanders away.

It's just like a sheep that does that. You have to watch over your money.

People, you know, the money comes in, the money goes out, they don't know where it went. If you don't have a plan, an old, you know, saw here is if you fail to plan, you plan to fail, and it's absolutely true.

Absolutely true. Listen to what John MacArthur says. He says, the credibility of our

Christianity is at stake in the handling of our funds. That's why we must treat money as a stewardship.

If your employer gives you $100 to buy you something for him, and then demands an accounting of how you spent the money, you're going to take good care of the money.

But if you have $100 of your own money, then you'll spend it however you please.

But whose money is it really? It's a matter of perspective. The correct answer for the

Christian is the money belongs to God. He wrote a whole book about that called, Whose Money Is It Anyway?

And I've sort of stolen the outline from that. I'm going to be plugging in some scripture, some other ideas, and we're going to get to some practical things.

I want everybody to be able to think through the budgeting process. It's going to be different for everybody, but everyone needs to get hold of this.

And for young people, I would say that the main takeaway

I would want anyone to get is, if you start life off, what's normal now? My mind is boggled when we start talking about college costs.

How much does it cost to go to college? Too much is correct.

What's that? $100 ,000. $100 ,000 is a nice start. That's living off campus, and it depends on where you go.

But listen, if you go to the master's college, pretty nice school, I recommend it. You're probably talking about, and living on campus, you're talking about more than $100 ,000 for a four -year education if you go there all four years.

That's why I put my...my kids were on the two -year junior college plan, you know, because I didn't want to build up too big of an anti -dowry for them.

It's rough. It's rough. And we'll talk a little bit more about college because I've learned a few loopholes.

I'm not a tax accountant, and I don't play one on TV, but there are a few good things about that.

But let's talk about the morality of money. Let's look at Haggai 2, verses 7 and 8, because some

Christians, I think, have this tendency, you know, it's filthy lucre, whatever.

Actually, I don't even know why I'm turning...I don't have to turn there because I've printed out all the scriptures for myself on my sheet. Blessed am

I among men. Who would like to read

Haggai 2, verses 7 and 8? Mr. Binney. And some of you sharp readers will say, yes, but not the money, he just talks about gold and silver.

What's the principle there? If the gold and the silver are his, then what? Can money be evil?

No. God controls it all. It can't be a bad thing. Here's an interesting little thing that MacArthur dug up.

He says that Jesus taught a lot about having a proper view of money, and he says that Jesus taught more about stewardship, stewardship of finances and resources.

He taught more about that than heaven and hell combined. So I think it is a pretty important topic, and that's why

I chose Money Matters for this series, the name of it. What else does...well,

let me ask it another way. What does how you treat money tell you about you?

It tells you where your heart is. Where would we find that in the Bible? Matthew 6.

Let's go to Matthew 6, Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6, verses 19 through 24.

And again, you know, I said I want this to be interactive, so if questions pop up, if they're practical questions, probably be better if you saved them up for me, but if you want to write them down or you want to email them to me,

I want to address all those things. Leave no stone unturned. I have the best resources in the world, the internet, you know, stuff like that.

So, all right. Matthew 6, verses 19 and 24. Who wants to read that? Bob. Yeah, through 24.

You cannot serve God in money. We understand this intellectually. We know this truth intellectually.

But how many times do we fall prey to the advertising? I think Pastor Mike's talked about advertising before.

What's the goal of advertising? I'm sorry? Discontentment.

Discontentment. The idea, you know, I mean, just think if an ad came on and said, you know what?

You have a pretty good just the way things are. But if you've got extra money laying around, you could buy...

They would never do that. So it's like, what you have in your driveway is dreck. What you have in your closet is trash.

You know, you need to get out to... That's exactly right. You need to get out and buy this or that or the other thing or, you know, how did you live before the iPad came around?

GE, we bring good things to life. I mean, there are... It is impossible to construct a worldview that includes advertising that doesn't involve discontentment.

You just can't do it. Now, let me ask you this. Have you ever watched one of those hoarding shows, you know, where they go through somebody's house and they've just got all this stuff just piled up all over the place?

What does that tell us about this person? What's that? They have issues.

Some people might say they don't have enough space. That's what the problem is. I mean, for some people, and I have to kind of defend having parents who were child, children of the depression.

I think there's a certain tendency among people that generation to just hold on to everything because you never know when you might need it, right?

Because there was a time where whatever you had was very precious, you know.

But if we cling on to the things of the world or possessions so tightly that we just cannot let them go, then it tells us something about where our values are.

I mean, this would be the nightmare, you know, to watch some like Christian hoarders.

That would be the worst reality show ever, you know. I mean, I'd be like, well, that's the thing.

And you bring up a great example, you know, people who just buy more stuff than they know that they have and they forget they have it and they've got, you know, therefore a house full of stuff that they have nothing to do.

But, you know, the truth is that even on a modest income, if you spend, here's the principle and here's the overview of where we will go in the next many weeks.

If you spend less than you make, this is a shocking concept, if you spend less than you make, you will get ahead.

I don't care if you make $30 ,000 a year or if you make $300 ,000 a year.

If you spend less than what you make and you save, you'll be ahead of the game.

One of the shocking concepts, you know, for me, I mean, this is all like, I don't know, the last 10, 12 years for me.

One of the shocking concepts to me was this idea of an emergency fund. And why was this shocking?

Because I grew up in a household where if we had an emergency, what did that mean? It was the credit card.

You know, the emergency is nothing more than a Sears charge card away or whatever, you know, from solving the problem.

It's no problem. That's why we have credit cards. And, you know, it's no problem because the bills come in and we can handle, you know, 20, 30, $40 a month times 5, 6, 7, 8.

It doesn't really matter. And you know, it doesn't really matter how much credit card,

I mean, this is kind of the revolving debt idea of the economy these days, is it doesn't matter how much you make as long as you can afford the payment.

And the real problem with that, of course, is, again, what do you wind up in, in a situation where your bills are here, your income is there, and you look at the two and you go, that's pretty scary.

They're either so close it's not even funny or the bills actually are bigger than the income and you just can't do that.

If you spend less than you make and you save, not only will you actually be able to retire at some point, but you might actually have something, you know, other than Social Security.

How many of you are planning on living on Social Security? Because this is going to be some sad times, some really sad times.

You know, I think we'll probably get to the point where if you're on Social Security, they won't even let you into the old folks' home. I mean, it's pretty miserable.

That's not where you want to be. So saving, spending less than what you make.

I mean, and again, this gets back to having a plan. I don't care how much you make. If you, let's put it this way, if you work for 40 years, which seems like nothing these days.

I mean, let's see. If I started working at 18, which I did, and I'll stop working at, I don't know, 88.

What is that? How many years is that? 70 years? Look, if, let's just say 68 for the sake of argument.

That's 50 years. If I make an average salary of $40 ,000, now I'll say when I started out, what was it, 5 ,000?

And then probably eventually, within a few years, it was, you know, 20 ,000 or whatever. But if you make an average of 40, $50 ,000 a year, and you actually save 10 % of that during the whole time and you invest it in everything else, guess what?

At the end of that 50 years, from 18 to 68, you're going to have a pretty good chunk of change.

But we don't do that. I'll save later. I'll save later. I'll save later.

And meanwhile, the bills keep coming along. Kids got to go to college. We got to have a new car. We got to have a new lawnmower. We got to have this. We got to have that.

The point of having an emergency fund, getting back to that, is, and we started at $1 ,000, and we've gone to 2 ,000.

Because here's the problem. The problem is, the more responsibilities you have, when you have a house, you have a car, this kind of thing, $1 ,000 pretty soon is just like, it's like, it's nothing.

Yeah. So we've gone to more than that. But if you have that emergency fund, then here's the tendency, and we'll talk more about this later, but here's the tendency.

Well, you know, we can get Red Sox tickets, but we don't have the money for it. Well, let's use the emergency fund.

It's not an emergency. Emergency is an emergency, something unplanned for, something that you really have to do.

So anyway, we'll talk more about that. But keeping out of debt is one of the key things we could do.

And if you're in debt, that's fine, just reducing it. And I mean, I think ideally, what

I'd like to get to in my own life, I'd like to get to the point where all I have, period, is the house payment.

And then I'd like to get to the point where I don't even have that. And people are like, well, wait a minute, why would you not want a house payment?

What about the tax write -off? And I think, I mean, for me, it might be tough because probably most of you don't know this, but there's a loophole in the tax laws where passers get a certain amount of their income as a housing allowance.

And so we get to write off the income. The income is not taxed.

Some of it is not taxed. And then the interest on the house is also a deduction.

So it's kind of like a double whammy. So I don't know. But I would like to be at a place where every month, you know, the bills come in, only there are no bills.

What would that be like? Can anybody imagine, you know, sitting down to do your budget and saying, okay, let's say it's just,

I'm living large, you know, I'm at the end of my life or whatever, and all I've got is savings, and I've got my retirement income from LA, and I've got my social security.

And I don't know, maybe it's, maybe I've got $5 ,000 income a month, which

I think is probably low because I get like $3 ,500 from LA County, but whatever it is. But I have no bills.

I don't have to pay for the house. All I have to do is pay the insurance. You know, I've got, that's kind of incredible to have that kind of money.

I'm pretty much free to do whatever I want. I can give as much as I want to the church. I can give to other people. I can do whatever I want.

Yeah, let's not even talk about Massachusetts, and not that I'm planning on moving to New Hampshire.

But look, she's exactly right. You know, people that write off for having a house, if your interest is $10 ,000 a year, and you're in a 25 % tax bracket, then you get a $2 ,500 essentially a credit.

So you're paying $10 ,000, you're investing $10 ,000, and you're getting $2 ,500 back, which is not horrible, but it's not that great.

And wouldn't it be better not to be paying any interest at all, you know? So, yeah.

Yeah, and when you, you know what's shocking is when you go and assign those documents, the house, you know, the house loan documents, and you go, okay, it's a $250 ,000 loan.

And they say, okay, well, here's how much you're going to pay in interest. And you look at it, you know, over the life of the loan, you're going to pay $600 ,000, whatever you just go.

Really? My $250 ,000 home is now $600 ,000. Yeah, it really is.

So, I mean, you have to think about all these kind of things. And that's why, you know, not getting in over your head is really, really important.

But anyway, so that's the overall thrust. I just want us to think about money correctly. I want us to think about shepherding it.

I want us to think about, you know, here's one little trick. I'll just throw this out at you. And I wanted to talk more about the theology of money, and we will.

But one of the things that I, because I like, how many of you like to spend money?

I really like to spend money. I'm not going to lie. I like to spend money.

My wife is the opposite of me. She's not so much a spender. And one of the things

I've learned to do over the years, and this might help you, is to just say to myself, I'm going to cry until I get what

I want. No. No, it's to say, you know what?

I want this. I like this. But I don't have to buy it today. I'll wait till tomorrow.

And then tomorrow, I tell myself, I like it. I want it. I'll wait till tomorrow. I like it.

I want it. I'll wait till tomorrow. And eventually, I've forgotten all about it, because I forget everything.

Sorry, that's just reality. For some of you, maybe you don't forget everything. I don't know. But I just tend to forget stuff.

So eventually, you know, or like, I'll close my browser, and it'll go away forever, and I'll just forget about it.

You know, it's gone. So MacArthur writes this.

He says, although it is not sinful to have money and possessions, there's nothing wrong with those things. It is definitely sinful to hoard, worship, and covet them as symbols of prestige and overindulge by building your life around them.

Stuff. I've got to have stuff. Stuff makes me happy. Stuff does not make you happy.

I've told this story. I have a friend who's a millionaire. It's good to have friends who are millionaires.

I like him. He's never given me anything, but, you know, he's a nice guy. Not a

Christian. And he pulled me into his office. I was leaving one morning from work.

He pulled me into his office, and he said, well, I hear you're in seminary.

And I said, yeah. And he goes, well, talk to me a little bit about it. So I did. And he goes, can I just tell you something?

He says, I just bought a brand new Corvette. He goes, I've wanted one forever.

He says, I went into the showroom, I took it on a test drive, and I had to have it. And it was like, it's this super fast one.

I mean, it was like, at the time, and this is what, I don't know, it must be 12 years ago, something like that.

You know, it was like an $80 ,000 car. Went in and paid cash for it. And he goes, you know how long it made me happy?

Five minutes, yeah. He goes, it was nothing. I had to have it, I wanted it, it was just going to change my life.

Five minutes. He goes, it's just stuff. And that's exactly, but that's, you know, that's the idea behind advertising.

That's the idea behind so many things that we see, is to get us discontent with what we have, to convince us that happiness is beyond the next door.

You know, it's not in the box that Carol Merrill is bringing down the aisle. Or Jay Stewart is, most of you are too young to know what that means.

But, you know, let's make a deal. You know, the old TV show. Most of us think that somehow happiness is behind that curtain.

And what we don't know is, you know, when they open it up, it's going to be three pigs in a poke. You know, we forget that life is not about the stuff.

Life, you know, here's another point. This is not in my notes either. I remember once I was in a, what we call a discipleship lab, where one of the professors would meet every week with just a small group of us.

And this guy said, he said, you know what? He said, here's what churches focus on. Churches focus on what?

Programs. I mean, there are good programs, you know, Wawana and other things. But they focus on programs.

We've got 12 -step. We've got this program. We've got that program. We're going to, you know, transform your life in 40 days.

Whatever it is, you know. We've got programs. What else do they focus on?

Property, okay? Well, you say, we shouldn't be focused on property. We've got a new piece of land, and we're really driving it too.

Every week, we're getting up and hitting you guys about it. They focus on those two things.

He says, what did Jesus focus on? He said two things. People and principles.

People and principles. That's what our lives should be like. We should be focused on principles and people, not on stuff.

I mean, you know, do you need a car? Yes, you do. Do you need a place to live? Yes, you do. But it's, you know, it's all the stuff that just kind of drives us that is just wrong.

If you, you know, I knew guys. Again, when I was on the sheriff's department,

I remember a guy who, before they set limits on how much overtime you could make, he made more money during the year.

Now, this is really, you have to understand the disparity of income. He made more money than our captain did, and our captain got a county car and probably made,

I don't know, by salary at least twice as much as the average. Deputy, but this guy worked so much overtime that he made more than the captain did.

And so somebody took and they posted signs up around our facility that said, elect this guy captain because he earned it.

You know, and I mean, it was like, it was, it was kind of, but the department actually passed restrictions on that. But what it meant, basically, was he was working almost, almost 80 hours a week for a whole year.

You just go, why? Well, because he had a boat, and he had a, you know, all this other stuff, and he had to pay for it.

Didn't have any time to enjoy it, but he had to have it. Now, it is possible to be rich and corrupt, and it's possible to be poor and corrupt.

In other words, it's possible to be rich and be greedy. It's possible to be poor and be greedy. And you say, well, how's that possible, to be rich and be greedy, because there's never enough.

If your appetites are voracious, if they're insatiable, then there's never enough for you.

And if you're poor, and you're consumed by envy, and you've got to have the things that other people have, then that becomes your idol.

That becomes your entire desire, it consumes you. But it's also possible to be rich, and to be righteous, to think about things rightly, and it's possible to be poor and righteous.

We tend to, especially in society, the tendency tends to be to want to grant people who are poor what?

Not just the benefit of the doubt, but to assume that somehow it's the meek that will inherit the earth, and therefore the poor are meek, and they must be better than most people.

That may or may not be true. It's all a matter of priorities. Leon Moore says this, he says, talking about Matthew chapter six.

He says, the climax of this saying, is that it is impossible to be simultaneously a slave of both

God and mammon. And he says, cannot, meaning you cannot serve both, is a strong term.

It signifies a sheer impossibility. Slave is another strong term.

It points to complete devotion. It is possible to devote oneself wholly to the service of God, and it is possible to serve, to devote oneself wholly to the service of money.

But, it is not possible to devote oneself wholly to the service of both.

The stark alternatives make it clear that the service of God is no part time affair, but something that calls for one's fullest devotion.

Since money tends to draw people away from God, Jesus warns about it. It is no sin to have money, but it is a sin to serve or to be a slave to money.

And, you know, I've said this in a variety of different ways, but in the same way, money neither brings nor prevents happiness.

We have to think of money for what it is. It is a blessing from the Lord, and it is a tool that we should use.

It is something that is necessary for life, but it should not become the focus of our lives.

Just as a practical example, you know, people often say, well, I'm moving away from Massachusetts.

I understand that for some reasons, okay? You know, whether it's health or whatever, you know.

Here's one thing, though, that I think people need to watch out for, and that's, I've got a better job here or there or wherever.

That's fine, but do you know where you're going, and do you know that there's a good church there?

People tend to put, they can put their profession in front of spiritual things, and we ought not to do that.

Remember a couple months leaving Grace Community Church in California, they were going to North Carolina. And they said, oh, it's not gonna be a problem.

There are lots of good churches in North Carolina. So we asked them, we said, well, have you ever been there? You know, to this area where you're going?

And they said, no, but we know that's the buckle of the Bible belt. We'll have no problem at all. So fast forward a couple years, they came back.

What happened? We couldn't find a good church. We couldn't find a church that would teach the

Bible. They went off chasing money and wound up coming back because they couldn't find a place that would teach the word.

You have to, you have to have your priorities right, and that always has to come first. Now, just to kind of back to, get back to the theology of this, let's look at Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, verses 17 and 18.

Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, and we all know

Deuteronomy means second law.

That's correct. Deuteronomy 8, verses 17 and 18, beware lest you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.

You shall remember the Lord your God for it is he who gives you power to get wealth that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers as it is this day.

And you say, well, that's Moses talking to the people in the Old Testament. Well, the truth is what?

That even as we read in Haggai, or we could look at Psalm 24, the earth is the Lord's and all it contains.

Does he not distribute things the way he wants? Does he not make it rain on the just and the unjust?

Does he not give blessings to both the righteous and the unrighteous?

The answer is yes. And the right attitude, our attitude, needs to be what? Job 121,

Job said this after he's lost everything, right? I mean, we all know the story of Job. Maybe some of us don't know the story of Job.

He was a wealthy man, had a large family, and what happens? He loses everything.

And his response is this, and he said, naked I came from my mother's womb. I was born with nothing.

And naked shall I return. When I leave, I'm not taking anything with me. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. One of my old professors in the seminary said this. He said, all things have been

God's gifts. Job prays an affirmation. This acknowledges that he came into the world barren of anything besides himself and will go out taking nothing out of this world.

God's bounty, or God is gracious and is giving. The Lord gave and the

Lord has taken away. Again, his aspect in prayer in Job's statement here is affirmation of what is true.

Everything he had was by God's wealth and will. God's blessedness is mentioned here.

Blessed be the name of the Lord. Job's aspect of prayer is acknowledgement and praise or confession of his worthiness,

God's worthiness, his name or reputation. His very being is honored and due the heart's tribute.

Whatever circumstances we find ourselves, what? We are to rejoice and to think about God.

When people, you know, I go through this exercise all the time. You know, how are you this morning? Better than I deserve.

And that's true. And it's true financially too. If you have anything, if you have two nickels to rub together, you're better off than you deserve.

Because what you deserve is eternity in hell. You came into the world with nothing except for a sin nature.

You'll leave the world with nothing except Christ, which is everything.

We have to close, but next week we'll move on in the theology of it and we will get to practical again.

If you have questions, anything that you want me to address, feel free to either bring it to me or send it to me.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, I just pray that you would cause us all to examine our hearts, to look at our motives, to even go through the budgeting process, look at our own budgets to see if we can say that we view all things as coming from you, that we are doing our very best to shepherd, to guard, to be good stewards of our money, to make sure that, as one man said, that each dollar has a name on it, that we know where it's going, that we're accountable for it.

Father, I pray that you would just make us wise stewards, those who would invest for kingdom purposes, those who would think more highly of others than we do of ourselves.

And Lord, that we would shun really the distractions and the discontentment that the world would push on us, that if we would only do this or that, or have this or have that, that we would be happy.

Father, I just pray that you would teach us to trust in Christ alone, not on our riches or in anything that we might be able to obtain.